Knife Attack Suspect Picked Todaimae Station Due to University-Related Name; Says He Wanted to Show Danger of Education-Obsessed Parenting

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:27 JST, May 9, 2025

The suspect who assaulted a man with a knife at a station in Tokyo on Wednesday night told police that he wanted to show parents that being too obsessed with educating their children in hopes of sending them to the University of Tokyo could lead to crime, according to investigative sources.

The suspect, Yoshitaka Toda, 43, of Ikusaka, Nagano Prefecture, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department after cutting the head of a 20-year-old male college student with a knife on a Namboku Line train while it was stopped at Todaimae Station at around 7 p.m. The MPD believes that he chose the station because it was named for the University of Tokyo — commonly called “Todai” in Japanese — and began attacking passengers indiscriminately.

According to the sources, Toda remained silent after being arrested, but on Thursday explained that he dropped out of junior high school because his parents were too obsessed with education. He also stated that because the name of the station refers to the University of Tokyo, it would be easy to associate it with educational abuse. As for why he attacked the victim, he said it was just because he happened to be nearby and that he didn’t care if the victim died.